On September 17, 2021, a non-conventional South Korean dystopian series dropped on Netflix and exploded globally after a decade of rejections by numerous studios. Hitherto declared by most approached studios as ‘too grotesque’ and ‘too unrealistic’ for the audience, the series became a hit on viewers' screens in four weeks, attracting a record-breaking 1.65 billion viewing hours, climbing atop all ongoing TV shows in ninety-four countries and generating $900m in value. Despite the plot validating the evaluation of the studios that had earlier rejected the series, the series succeeded massively, winning six Primetime Emmy Awards and one Golden Globe. For deep thinkers and people of faith, this is both paradoxical and intriguing.
The Plot in Brief
Four hundred and fifty-six (456) individuals in deep financial crisis and hopeless about turning their lives around are invited to a deadly children’s game contest at a secret location. The contest is presented to the players as hope for a miraculous turnaround that could better their lives and win them a massive cash prize.
After the contest commenced, the players realized that any player that loses any game would die or be killed immediately after the game but at the same time, each death would increase the grand prize by ₩100 million. As a result, the ultimate grand prize for a lone winner is ₩45.6 billion. The games are structured in a way that awakens the darker side of human nature as it breeds aspirations, greed, lust, avarice and selfishness in the players. As a matter of fact, the players are allowed to kill themselves and are even set up to kill themselves during the course of the game. However, players can terminate the contest abruptly after a game if majority agrees. But majority insists on continuing the contest after every game because the accumulated cash is always shown to the players before the vote and majority would want to take the risk of increasing the grand prize.
One of the players eventually wins the game but eventually decides to bring the game to an end in a subsequent edition due to the brutal nature of the game and how the game exploits the players’ hopelessness.
Meanwhile, there are moneybags behind the contest who pass time by betting on the players. It does not affect them that the players are losing their lives, they party and jolly while the game is ongoing. They bet on their favourite players, celebrate their wins and be entertained by their losses and deaths. To the moneybags, the contest is a leisure activity in which they have fun while it remains a deadly struggle for the participating players.
The Modern World as a Reality Mirror.
Notwithstanding that the movie was inspired in Hwang Dong-hyuk (the filmmaker) out of his experience with friends and neighbours that were plunged into deep financial predicament, the series succeeded because it tells the story of inequality, exploitation and tyrannic tendencies of opulence that characterize the modern world. It reminds us of the modern world as a largely capitalist platform where ‘the self’ is the only important factor in the measure of things. It does not matter if the world is oppressed, suppressed, depressed, persecuted and victimized inasmuch as ‘the self’ is benefitting. It does not matter if millions of others lose if there are gains for ‘the self’. As a matter of fact, it does not matter if millions of others are sacrificed in the pursuit of pleasure for ‘the self’. This explains why some of the leading indices of economic growth across the globe, are the practice of gambling, interest-based businesses, alcohol businesses, hard drug deals, fraudulence, only fans, amongst others. These are the very indices that destroy us and our world, but contrastingly, they also serve as money-making channels for many people and countries in the modern world.
Islam, the Modern World and Squid Game
Islam stands at the other divide of today’s modern practices. It does not celebrate the self at the expense of others. It concerns itself with the welfare of everyone. This is why principles like zakat (obligatory tax), sadaqah (charity), waqfu (endowment), wasiyyah (will), jiwar (neighbourliness), amongst others are legislated with notions of communal considerations. It is also why practices such as interest-based loans, gambling, alcoholism, fraudulence, amongst others are forbidden in order to safeguard self-destructions and self-annihilation.
These Islamic principles are in contradistinction to those that claim to be advocates of egalitarian principles as they are frontliners of this insidiousness. The conventional banking system for instance largely thrives on interest, games of chance are given massive investment and alcohol consumption is a social norm in many of such countries. This is why the Squid Game series is a mirror of the modern world. All of the players had fallen into hopelessness due to their entrapment within some of these banes of our modern world. The series reflects the reality of survival struggle and inequality that is eventuated by the capitalist strategies of equipping the ‘self’ for wealth at the detriment of our collective society.
Last Thoughts
Divine provisions for man, as established in Islam, continue to be the best provisions for him. All of the channels we have created for ourselves have been laced with inequities and injustices. This invariably puts many people in difficulties and hardships, and this explains why, despite the global efforts to attain sustainable development, the world is still plagued by pandemics like poverty, inequality, ill health, and terrorism, amongst others. Little then is the wonder that the words of Allah in Suratul Maidah, ayah 47 that “whoever did not judge by what Allah revealed, those are they that are the transgressors” find resonance in the modern world.
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